That’s what’s so wonderful about you, you’re so self-sufficient that I feel that you’ve created your own self.

A freedom which is interested only in denying freedom must be denied. And it is not true that the recognition of the freedom of others limits my own freedom: to be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future; the existence of others as a freedom defines my situation and is even the condition of my own freedom. I am oppressed if I am thrown into prison, but not if I am kept from throwing my neighbor into prison.

Politics always puts forward Ideas: Nation, Empire, Union, Economy, etc. But none of these forms has value in itself; it has it only insofar as it involves concrete individuals. If a nation can assert itself proudly only to the detriment of its members, if a union can be created only to the detriment of those it is trying to unite, the nation or the union must be rejected. We repudiate all idealisms, mysticisms, etcetera which prefer a Form to man himself.

(…) symbolism did not fall out of heaven or rise out of subterranean depths: it was elaborated like language, by the human reality…

Ethics is the triumph of freedom over facticity.

Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death.

The misfortune is that although everyone must come to [death], each experiences the adventure in solitude. We never left Maman during those last days... and yet we were profoundly separated from her.

It's easy to pay with the blood of others.

Every war, every revolution, demands the sacrifice of a generation, of a collectivity, by those who undertake it.